Friday--

Temperatures hit 90F yesterday according to the weather people.  Supposed to be a tad cooler today (mid 80s) before going back into the 90s for the weekend.  Suitable, I guess, for the Labor Day holiday.  I keep looking at the spend sunflowers thinking it is time to cut off the spent flowers but each time we see some goldfinches pecking at the seeds.  Can't take out the stalks because they are the supports for my beans.  At least one hummingbird has been visiting the feeder and a couple of the flowering herbs.

The news this morning noted the expanded Kraft Singles and the Johnsonville sausage patties recalls.  I pay attention to recalls but more often now-a-days don't have to think too much about them because we either never bought the product or stopped buying them a long while ago.  We never bought the sausage patties and stopped getting the Kraft Singles cheese products over two years ago.  We haven't given up either sausage or sliced cheese--we just get both from our local meat market.  Better flavor, fresher, less packaging and fewer (many fewer) extraneous chemicals.

Helen at Margaret and Helen is on another good roll this morning.  I simply do not see how calling out a little asshat tyrant claiming religious convictions to deny people she doesn't like their rights under our secular law because god gave her a private revelation is "religious persecution" or "criminalizing" Christianity.

The ghost of Elizabeth Bathory must be crowing though Ronni Bennett cites the myth of Tithonus.  The best discussion of the possible consequences of immortality is Robert Heinlein's Time Enough For Love.  Most of us would be terminally bored before our Biblical "threescore and ten" ended.  What would we do with eternity?  I have a few ideas of what I would do if my physical age were in my late 20s or early 30s again but they wouldn't fill up all the time immortality implies.  I have always had a problem with the notion that more life is better no matter the quality of that life.  What is the use of extending a life for a short time at great cost when that time will be spent in pain and suffering?  And other moral considerations are very troubling.  Look up the story of Countess Bathory and tell me that our uber rich wouldn't feel entitled to youth at what ever price to those from whom that youth would be taken.

Saturday--

I had intended to post yesterday but got distracted.  My computer was giving me a problem because it kept freezing up and giving me the "beach ball of death."  I kept getting the message "Safari web content not responding" as I tried to go through my e-mail.  That is a problem that occurred with greater frequency over the last couple of weeks and yesterday seemed to happen almost every other e-mail I brought up.  I finally shifted over to Chrome as my primary search engine.  It seems to work better.  I preferred Safari but if it won't work smoothly I don't have much choice.

The gardening season is definitely coming to an end.  The shadow of the house on the patio and back fence clearly indicate that.  By the autumnal equinox at the end of the month that shadow will touch the top of the fence and the garden will be in deep to partial shade for most of the day.  That is the cycle of my year:  spring equinox begins the time of increasing light (reflected and direct) my plants can use though planting doesn't begin seriously until mid May when the average last frost occurs, summer solstice when the garden gets the equivalent of full sun, and, finally, the autumn equinox when the gardens go into shade and dark and it is time to clean up and plan for the next growing season.  As I water the various containers I am thinking of the order in which the clean up will begin, which plants and pots will be taken out when.  The wheel turns.

Interesting commentary on the growing separation between the privileged classes and everyone else in our society.   Brings to mind a couple of old sayings.  "What is old is new again."  Or, terrifyingly, "What goes around comes around."

Here is a perfectly plain and eloquent discussion of the Kim Davis story.  As an agent of the state she had a duty to treat all people equally under the law and did not have the right to decide what law she would respect.  We are not a theocracy--at least not yet.  For an interesting commentary on the consequences if the current trend inherent in Kim Davis' actions (and of others like her but of different religious affiliation) check out this post.  But this piece points out the problems with some of the more simplistic condemnations of Kim Davis' "expression" of her religious purity.  We don't condemn St. Paul as a hypocrite for persecuting Christians as Saul and preaching the gospel as Paul.  He saw "the light" and changed his life.

So some bankers expect to lose their jobs soon and are being told they shouldn't expect to be rehired soon (if at all) and certainly not at the salary/bonus level they currently occupy.  And the banks aren't looking at experienced people but rather those just out of college who have no memory of seven figure salaries and bonuses to match and will settle for low six figure wages.  They are finally joining the rest of us.

I rather like this idea.  Too bad it didn't pass when first proposed--in 1916.